The Private Life Of Cows8pm, BBC2

The cow is rarely considered by nature documentaries. They are common, unspectacular and difficult to cutely anthropomorphise. Jimmy Doherty resolves to rectify this omission with a new series. He begins by visiting the inhabitants of a cattle farm in Devon, and the wild herd that has bred for seven centuries in the grounds of Chillingham Castle in Northumberland. In both cases, he reveals much about the temperament and group politics of cows, and both are more interesting that you might have imagined.

In Loving Memory9pm, BBC2

It's an all too frequent sight: flowers tied to lampposts and trees, denoting road traffic collisions – or the more recent phenomenon of ghost bikes (painted white and chained up at fatal cycling accident spots). It is similarly poignant that the grieving friends and families who place them at roadsides often find themselves at odds with local councils, who'd have their floral tributes removed under healthy and safety regulations. This documentary tells the story of four such families, and highlights the importance of the shrines to them.

Desperate Housewives10pm, Channel 4

There's much of the American daytime soap about Desperate Housewives these days in the way it devours great chunks of plot. Curiously, this isn't necessarily a bad thing because DH has become both deeply daffy and seriously hyperreal, frequently a winning combination. Witness tonight's season six finale: Susan and Mike's yard sale may provide a veneer of normality, but we're also offered a squeamish strangler as midwife and a race-against-time rescue mission involving a bomb and a man whose physical condition is "somewhere between a coma and a nap". Roll on season seven.

Playhouse Live9pm, Sky Arts 2

Sky Arts is possibly the most ironic television channel currently broadcasting, in that it consistently shows the sort of stuff whose absence from the popular media is routinely blamed on Rupert Murdoch – while being partially owned, of course, by Rupert Murdoch. Certainly, it is depressingly difficult to imagine any terrestrial station showing anything like this: a five-part season of original drama. Tonight's final offering, Here, by Vagina Monologues creator Eve Ensler, is a tragicomic meditation on intimate relationships, starring Fiona Glascott and Matthew Marsh.

Justified10pm, Five USA

The buzzwords around Justified at the moment are "Deadwood reunion". Never mind the fact that the show features Tim Olyphant enigmatically blowing people away while bearing a hat. The show also provides actors with the requisite sinister chops to get back on TV – tonight, it's Swearengen's sidekick Johnny, who plays Virgil. Beyond the obligatory trainspottery fascination, it's a good episode all round: Raylan's nemesis Boyd emerges from prison to start up a backwoods ministry, while Raylan meets an eccentric judge.

Sons Of Anarchy10pm, Bravo

Now entering the endgame for season two – only two more weeks to go – things are coming to a head for the SAMCRO Hells Angel gang. Perhaps more than anything else on at the moment, this show plays more like a long movie than a TV series as it builds and builds. The premise seems to have made viewers resistant to its charms, but it's about motorbikes in the same way that cowboy movies are about horses: not very. All the secrets that have weighed heavy this season – Donna's murder, Gemma's rape – finally come out and the results, as always in this fine show, are not what you'd expect.